


The Quiet Road

by ryfkah



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scar and Marcoh, on their not-quite-wacky road trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quiet Road

Marcoh is not a quiet man by nature, but necessity has helped him grow accustomed to it, and so he does his best to respect Scar’s silences on the long days they spend walking the roads.

He’s not always able to repress the desire for conversation. If he were going to be honest with himself, there’s a certain reassurance in Scar’s gruff, often monosyllabic responses, about as far from Envy’s manic malice as it’s possible to get. He tries his best, all the same; silence is a gift Marcoh ought to be able to give to this young man. It’s the least he can do, surely, given the peace that Scar’s presence brings Marcoh.

Which is not to say that Scar never speaks to Marcoh first. It’s Scar who calls the midday halts, always, with a keen eye for when the older man starts to flag. Marcoh tries to thank him for it, the first day.

“You’ve been injured,” Scar says, expressionlesss, “and you aren’t strong. If you fall sick again, you’re useless.”

This has the opposite effect of what’s probably intended, in that it makes Marcoh want to thank Scar twice as much. He wants to thank him for believing in his usefulness; for not forgiving him, because Marcoh has done the unforgivable, and finding value in him regardless. He stores the words away somewhere, aware Scar won’t welcome them. Perhaps he’ll find a time when it’s all right to say them.

But the longer they travel, the more he thinks that he never will; slowly, left to their own company, they are reaching the point where things don’t need to be spelled out. “Look,” he says to Scar one day as they pass by a children’s shop, feeling a smile settling over his ruined face, “see those barrettes in the window? They’ve got black-and-white cats on them just like Xiao Mei.”

Scar pauses. Then he turns on his heel and walks into the shop, coming out in a few moments with the barrettes displayed in his hand.

He doesn’t say anything, and Marcoh finds it hard to explain even to himself, for a while, why this small moment stays with him for so long after. It’s not just the sense of being understood, although this is a good part of it. The other part, he eventually realizes, is the implication of the act: if little Mei has made her way safely home to Xing, as Marcoh devoutly hopes she has, then the only way for her to receive this present is if someone crosses the desert to deliver it. He thinks he would like to let Mei show him around her home, and see how her irrepressible confidence asserts itself on her home ground. Perhaps Scar feels the same way.

A few months ago, if Marcoh was looking forward to anything, it was reaching the peace at the end. He has a heavy suspicion that Scar felt something similar, although (needless to say) they’ve never spoken of it. It’s a relatively common consequence of a life lived as one long discussion with the dead.

Marcoh is thoroughly aware that his travels since then have changed him. But before now, he hasn’t even thought that perhaps he is not the only mass murderer to have found an unexpected grace while walking this long, quiet road.


End file.
